The last day of October marks the end of an era for the North Ridgeville High School’s Rangers. The football team will play their final game in the old stadium against the Lakewood Rangers. Next fall, the Rangers will play in their new stadium, with artificial turf, which is scheduled to have its initial ground breaking this spring. ‘The goal is to have the new stadium open for our home games which occur later in the season next year,’ said Superintendent Jim Powell. The new stadium will be built pending approval from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. After approval, the tentative ground breaking date will take place in March, he said. According to Powell, community groups will use the old stadium and the track surrounding the facility. The Middle School will continue to play football at the stadium until the new school is finished sometime in 2017. ‘It’s bittersweet because we have been in that stadium for so long,’ Powell said. ‘There are a lot of memories that go back and a lot of people have contributed to keep up the field and take care of it over the years.’ School officials said they will not miss the maintenance costs that is required every year for the grass field. ‘The old field is real grass, you have to keep a crown on it and it is a lot of work,’ Powell said. ‘We put a lot of money into that field every year in the fall and you have to work on it every year just to bring it back up.’ The new field will alleviate the upkeep costs associated with a real grass field, officials said. Since the new stadium’s construction is contingent on the spring’s weather, the old stadium will be used as a back-up. ‘The stadium will still be there next year and that’s the great thing, it is a contingency plan,’ said Matt Yunker, athletic director. ‘Nothing will be done to the old stadium in terms of demolition for several years. So if the weather or some other unforeseen circumstances slow the construction of the new stadium, we still have the old one to fall back on.’
